'Oh, What a Lovely Class War!Wednesday 11 March 2009
by: Michael Winship, t r u t h o u t Perspective
My goodness, how they howl when the proverbial shoe is on the proverbial other foot. You'd think the Red Army had just left Moscow and was preparing a frontal assault on the Federal Reserve.
So what are conservatives, Wall Street and financial television commentators shouting? Socialists! That's right. Spread the word: Socialists are swarming over our nation's Capitol and making off with the means of production, otherwise known as campaign contributions and the federal budget. You got trouble, my friends.
The hysteria started during the campaign, retreated a bit but was back full throttle by the day after the inauguration. President Obama's left hand was barely off Abraham Lincoln's Bible when South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint told the January 21 edition of The Wall Street Journal, "What I'm looking to do as a conservative leader in the Senate is to identify those Republicans, and even some Democrats, and put together a consensus of people who can help stop this slide toward socialism."
Newt Gingrich, resurrected yet again, proclaims his Contract on America has been canceled and replaced by Barack Obama's "European socialism." Josh Bolin, founder of the conservative web site Reagan.org is quoted in The New York Times saying, "Socialism is something new for us to hit Obama over the head with," and a panel at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference was titled, "Bailing Out Big Business: Are We All Socialists Now?"
And what do all these pesky socialists coming out from the woodwork want? Why, class war, of course. Arise, ye workers from your slumbers, at least in time to watch early morning TV. On the "Today" show last week, CNBC's Jim Cramer alleged that President Obama was perpetrating 'an agenda in this country now that I would regard as being a radical agenda," adding, "This is the most, greatest wealth destruction I've seen by a president."
Joan Walsh of Salon.com noted several hundred references to Obama and "class warfare" when she searched the words on Google News at the beginning of March and wondered "why are mainstream reporters pushing this storyline?"
The truth is, there's nothing new about any of this. A famous New Deal-era cartoon in The New Yorker shows Manhattan swells in black tie urging neighbors to "Come along. We're going to the Trans-Lux to hiss Roosevelt." And as financial historian Charles Geisst told the Times, "To hear [FDR] referred to as Comrade Roosevelt during that period was not unusual."
But although Obama embraces FDR analogies, in some respects he's a piker by comparison. The Columbia Journalism Review linked to a chart from the National Taxpayers Union and noted, "The top marginal rate of 39.6 percent that Obama is proposing is actually low by historical standards - he may be adopting FDR-style rhetoric, but his tax plan isn't in the same ballpark. And it wasn't only Roosevelt. Throughout the Eisenhower administration, top tax rates exceeded 90 percent. Under Nixon, they never dropped below 70 percent. Even for most of Ronald Reagan's term, they were at 50 percent. Those presidents aren't often thought of as 'class warriors.'"
So what are conservatives, Wall Street and financial television commentators shouting? Socialists! That's right. Spread the word: Socialists are swarming over our nation's Capitol and making off with the means of production, otherwise known as campaign contributions and the federal budget. You got trouble, my friends.
The hysteria started during the campaign, retreated a bit but was back full throttle by the day after the inauguration. President Obama's left hand was barely off Abraham Lincoln's Bible when South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint told the January 21 edition of The Wall Street Journal, "What I'm looking to do as a conservative leader in the Senate is to identify those Republicans, and even some Democrats, and put together a consensus of people who can help stop this slide toward socialism."
Newt Gingrich, resurrected yet again, proclaims his Contract on America has been canceled and replaced by Barack Obama's "European socialism." Josh Bolin, founder of the conservative web site Reagan.org is quoted in The New York Times saying, "Socialism is something new for us to hit Obama over the head with," and a panel at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference was titled, "Bailing Out Big Business: Are We All Socialists Now?"
And what do all these pesky socialists coming out from the woodwork want? Why, class war, of course. Arise, ye workers from your slumbers, at least in time to watch early morning TV. On the "Today" show last week, CNBC's Jim Cramer alleged that President Obama was perpetrating 'an agenda in this country now that I would regard as being a radical agenda," adding, "This is the most, greatest wealth destruction I've seen by a president."
Joan Walsh of Salon.com noted several hundred references to Obama and "class warfare" when she searched the words on Google News at the beginning of March and wondered "why are mainstream reporters pushing this storyline?"
The truth is, there's nothing new about any of this. A famous New Deal-era cartoon in The New Yorker shows Manhattan swells in black tie urging neighbors to "Come along. We're going to the Trans-Lux to hiss Roosevelt." And as financial historian Charles Geisst told the Times, "To hear [FDR] referred to as Comrade Roosevelt during that period was not unusual."
But although Obama embraces FDR analogies, in some respects he's a piker by comparison. The Columbia Journalism Review linked to a chart from the National Taxpayers Union and noted, "The top marginal rate of 39.6 percent that Obama is proposing is actually low by historical standards - he may be adopting FDR-style rhetoric, but his tax plan isn't in the same ballpark. And it wasn't only Roosevelt. Throughout the Eisenhower administration, top tax rates exceeded 90 percent. Under Nixon, they never dropped below 70 percent. Even for most of Ronald Reagan's term, they were at 50 percent. Those presidents aren't often thought of as 'class warriors.'"
Lees verder: http://www.truthout.org/031109A
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